Class-action suit against YouTube grows to eight parties

A class-action suit against YouTube is growing quickly, with a number of …

It looks as if a serious class-action lawsuit is brewing against Google, as a music trade association joins a growing list of unsettled copyright owners looking for reprieve from YouTube's copyright-violatin' ways. The National Music Publishers' Association has joined the suit headed up by England's Premier League, a soccer association that has accused YouTube of "knowingly misappropriating" its videos for YouTube's own gain.

Unlike the music labels such as Universal and EMI, which own copyrights to specific recordings of songs, the NMPA owns copyrights to music lyrics and specific melodies. Media companies that wish to use music usually have to obtain licenses from both the music label and the NMPA, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal —something that YouTube has not done when forming agreements with the four major labels to use their music on the site in exchange for a cut of ad revenue.

Joining the NMPA in the suit this week are several other entities: the Rugby Football League, the Finnish Football League Association, and author Daniel Quinn. It is also rumored that owner of the Los Angeles News Service, Robert Tur, will drop his own suit against YouTube to join the class-action suit. "The clear and growing message to YouTube and Google is simple: their callous and opportunistic business model is contrary to right, contrary to law, and must and will be stopped," said EPL spokesman Dan Johnson in a statement seen by Reuters.

In June, the French Ligue de Football Professionnel joined the EPL's suit against YouTube for "the benefit of our fans around the world," which was quickly followed by the Federation Francaise de Tennis. Independent music publisher Cherry Lane Music Publishing hopped on board next, saying that it was committed to meticulously protecting the copyrights of its clients.

That brings the number of parties that are in on the suit to eight (or nine, if you count Tur) who claim that YouTube has repeatedly and flagrantly violated their copyrights. Google and YouTube continue to maintain that the site is operating under the letter of the law due to the DMCA's Safe Harbor provision, which allows the site to operate as-is as long as it responds to DMCA takedown requests in a timely manner. But copyright owners have argued that Safe Harbor shouldn't protect YouTube and that the company needs to implement a more robust content filtering tool in order to show that it takes copyrights seriously.

And of course, there is still the infamous $1 billion Viacom suit against YouTube. With so many parties looking to cash in on YouTube's foibles, the company could indeed face a much more serious problem now than it did previously. Google said late last month that it planned to implement a filtering system by this fall, but whatever solution it chooses might be too little, too late for these copyright owners, who will almost definitely continue to push their lawsuits due to past infringement.